Latest News
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Success for Kangaroo Island’s glossy-black cockatoos
Tue, 29 May 2018Glossy black-cockatoos on Kangaroo Island eat just one thing – seeds of the drooping she-oak. To provide enough food for their nestlings, breeding adults spend the entire day picking one cone after another until their crop is full with about 10,000 of the protein rich kernels.
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The what, where and how of refuges for threatened animals - Ecological Society of Australia Refuges symposium
Tue, 29 May 2018As Australia recovers from another sizzling summer, have you ever wondered how our native animals get by when the going gets really tough? TSR Hub researchers from our refuges project are putting a lot of thought into that very question, they also organised a refuges symposium at the last Ecological Society of Australia conference. Here they talk about some exciting new findings in this space.
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Tracking the far eastern curlew - News from Darwin and beyond
Tue, 29 May 2018The Hub’s far eastern curlew project team has tagged a bird travelling as far as North Korea this year. Along with other recent discoveries, the Darwin-based project is succeeding in its aim of closing significant knowledge gaps in the breeding habits and migratory movement of the bird. Amanda Lilleyman provides an update on their latest research findings and activities.
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Monitoring for threatened species and ecological communities
Tue, 01 May 2018The TSR Hub has gathered monitoring experts, and managers who need and use monitoring information, from all over Australia to discuss the value of, and many challenges involved in, monitoring threatened biodiversity. This had led to a national assessment of the adequacy of threatened species monitoring in Australia, a framework to guide and assess monitoring programs and a new authoritative book.
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Judging a box by its cover
Tue, 13 Feb 2018Conservation managers considering the implementation of nest boxes programs need to give careful consideration to design, colour, placement and shade profile of nest boxes.
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Lost with the brigalow - Rediscovering something lost in order to save what still exists
Tue, 13 Feb 2018The vast brigalow forest that extended from northern New South Wales to southern Queensland has been cleared in the space of 60 years and it seems that many species have become threatened as a result. Rod Fensham and co-workers have identified the plant species that are likely to have become threatened and many of these species were not previously recognised as imperilled.
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Nest box offset fails to tick the box
Tue, 13 Feb 2018Rachel Robbins from the Australian National University continues her series on our successes and failures with nest boxes.
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On feral cats AND clearing - It’s no beauty contest
Tue, 13 Feb 2018In recent months you may have noticed some energetic public debate about what is the biggest threat to threatened species in Australia. Is it feral cats and foxes or is it the clearing and degradation of native vegetation?
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Out of the box - Designing nest boxes for conservation success
Tue, 13 Feb 2018Many of our threatened birds and arboreal mammals rely on tree hollows for nesting, but because we've cleared most of our big, old trees, these hollows are in short supply. Nest boxes are commonly proposed as an alternative, but do they actually provide an appropriate housing solution for our threatened species? Rachel Robbins from the Australian National University our successes and failures with nest boxes.
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Public preferences for fox and cat control in Western Australia
Tue, 13 Feb 2018Foxes and feral cats pose a serious threat to over 100 native Australian mammals, birds and reptiles. Controlling fox and feral-cat populations is therefore crucial to the survival of many native species. Usually, it’s the government who undertakes this management which means it’s the general public who pays. But has anyone ever bothered to ask the general public what they think about fox and cat control? Actually, Vandana Subroy and colleagues at the University of Western Australia have just investigated this very question. Here Vandana discusses what they found.
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Putting the heat on nest boxes
Tue, 13 Feb 2018Rachel Robbins from the Australian National University continues her series on our successes and failures with nest boxes.
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Researcher Profile: Natalie Briscoe
Tue, 13 Feb 2018Dr Natalie Briscoe’s childhood fascination with wildlife led to a career in analysing what it takes for a species to persist in a changing climate, and how this understanding helps identify what they need as refuge.
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Rock on! Restoring critical rock habitat for reptiles on farms
Tue, 13 Feb 2018Rocky habitats are critical to many small mammals and reptiles in farming landscapes but they don’t get the same attention as native vegetation. Dr Damian Michael from The Australian National University hopes to set that right. Here he explains why protecting rocky outcrops and bushrock is important, how this critical resource is being destroyed, and what measures need to be taken to improve habitat for threatened reptiles in agricultural landscapes.
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The turtle, the fox & the bandicoot - One problem solved another created
Tue, 13 Feb 2018What happens when your efforts to save one threatened species creates a new problem involving another species of conservation concern. Suddenly you’re faced with some difficult choices. Helena Bowler at the University of Western Australia explains here the unexpected complication that arose when fencing was put up to save endangered turtles from foxes.
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Indigenous Reference Group
Mon, 12 Feb 2018The Threatened Species Recovery Hub recognises that Indigenous people have very significant interests in, knowledge of, and responsibilities for Australia’s natural environment, including its threatened species.
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Rare tiny marsupial discovered by Harry Butler helped by new research
Thu, 21 Dec 2017One of Northern Australia’s rarest animals will be helped by a new monitoring technique developed by a Charles Darwin University research student. Butler’s Dunnart, discovered by famous adventurer Harry Butler in 1965, is so rare it was only seen 8 times in the next 37 years.
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Videos: Environmental Economic Accounts for the Victorian Central Highlands
Mon, 11 Dec 2017There are many strong and conflicting views about native forest logging in the Victorian Central Highlands, so where do policy makers begin? Two new videos look at an environmental economic accounting analysis for the region, including the value of different industries.
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Video: How are Northern Quolls responding to feral cat baiting in the Pilbara?
Tue, 05 Dec 2017A new video looks at TSR Hub research in the Pilbara, which is looking at how Northern Quolls are responding to a large scale feral cat baiting program by WA Parks and Wildlife and RioTinto.
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Cats are killing millions of Australia’s birds
Sun, 22 Oct 2017New Hub research has quantified the extent of predation by cats on Australia’s birds and identified the species and types of birds most vulnerable to cats. The team found that cats kill over 1 million birds per day in Australia. The total is made up of an estimated 316 million birds killed by feral cats and 61 million killed by pet cats each year.
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Acoustic monitoring to fill knowledge gaps about cockatoo breeding
Sat, 21 Oct 2017Sound recorders have been installed across farm land in south-western Victoria and on Kangaroo Island in research to help threatened glossy black-cockatoos and south-eastern red-tailed black-cockatoos, by learning more about their breeding.
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Mammals on ‘arks’
Sat, 21 Oct 2017As cats and foxes have spread across Australia, islands have prevented the extinctions of several mammals like the boodie. Associate Professor Sarah Legge discusses the importance of safe havens and also summarizes the highlights of a recent 'safe-haven' symposium held at the International Mammalogy Congress in Perth.
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NESP and threatened species
Sat, 21 Oct 2017The TSR Hub is one of six National Environmental Science Programme hubs and each is making its own important contribution to the national effort to recover our threatened species. Hub Director Brendan Wintle takes a look beyond the TSR Hub to highlight the good work being done on threatened species by our sister hubs.
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Watching Macquarie Island transform after a massive intervention
Fri, 20 Oct 2017On sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island a multi-million dollar eradication program removed cats in 2000 and rabbits, rats and mice in 2013. In the aftermath of this effort, beautiful things are emerging. Dr Justine Shaw is leading a TSR Hub project to learn from this experience and monitor how ecosystems respond.
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Why Buloke woodland species are failing to regenerate
Fri, 20 Oct 2017Endangered Buloke Woodlands were cleared over much of their original range, the largest remaining remnants now lie inside national parks. Park managers hoped that by removing livestock the Woodlands would regenerate naturally but, so far, this has failed to happen. Dr David Duncan's team have taken on the problem.
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Breakfast with a bettong - Celebrating Threatened Species Day 2017
Mon, 02 Oct 2017Rachel Morgain (Knowledge Broker for the TSR Hub) describes a breakfast with a difference.
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Learning from plants going places in Australia
Mon, 02 Oct 2017People have transported, cultivated, tended, used, celebrated and worshipped plants for tens of thousands of years. Sometimes our efforts led to a few species doing very well. Most of the time, however, our interactions have caused the diversity of plant life to shrink – through habitat loss and fragmentation, disease, weeds and overgrazing. Now we’ve started moving plants around to safeguard their survival. Indeed, we’ve been doing this for decades but so far we haven’t reviewed what we know about this process. But that’s about to change. Dr Jen Silcock from the University of Queensland provides an overview on the effort to build a new translocation database.
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Sustaining life
Mon, 02 Oct 2017A love for Australia’s wildlife lies at the core of our nation’s identity. It sustains our wellbeing. That is something that Dr Leonie Valentine can personally attest to as her passion for wildlife has helped her through good times and bad. Here she explains how.
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Western sanctuary, learning from translocations
Mon, 02 Oct 2017Dr Mike Smith joined the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) as a Regional Ecologist just as the organisation was kicking off a major conservation program to re-establish 10 regionally extinct mammal species in the south west of WA, an exciting time to come on board. The area they were being released into is an exclosure site set up by the AWC at Mt Gibson. Here he shares a few of the trials and tribulations of working with threatened species – and the exhilaration of seeing some of Australia’s most imperilled animals bounce back.
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Conserving Australia’s ghost of the arid interior – the night parrot
Tue, 26 Sep 2017There is no other species of Australian bird that quickens the pulse of professional ornithologists and amateur birdwatchers alike, as the night parrot. In the 170 years since its discovery, the night parrot has attained legendary status as a ghost of the vast arid inland. Several sightings (and findings) in recent years have revealed the parrot is far from being a ghost, but a dearth of information on the bird makes it hard to plan for its persistence into the future. Nick Leseberg from the University of Queensland brings us up to date on what is known about the night parrot, and what is planned for its conservation.
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Welcome to the Community
Tue, 26 Sep 2017Whilst the bulk of the research undertaken by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub deals with individual species, the Hub’s work also encompasses Threatened Ecological Communities. Ecological communities – you might like to think of them as ecosystems – are assemblages of species that occur and interact together, and will have co-evolved together, in a particular area typically defined by soil, rainfall and geomorphology.
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Australia’s Brigalow forests almost gone in 60 years
Tue, 05 Sep 2017In only 60 years Australia has lost over 90% of a type of forest that once covered 130,000 square kilometres, and could be losing plants with important medicinal uses.
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Cat eradication to help threatened species on Christmas Island
Tue, 05 Sep 2017Christmas Island National Park is aiming to do something that very few populated islands in the world have successfully achieved – the eradication of feral cats.
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Researchers tune in to nesting calls to help rare cockatoos
Tue, 05 Sep 2017Tiny sound recorders will be set up near the nests of South-eastern Red-tailed Black Cockatoos, as part of ground-breaking research to monitor the nesting habits of the endangered species.
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Tasmanian genes helping to rebuild Victoria’s bandicoots
Tue, 05 Sep 2017Low numbers of Eastern Barred Bandicoots in Victoria have resulted in low genetic diversity which is a threat to plans to rebuild numbers in breeding programs. A new partnership is addressing the issue with an innovative breeding program which is introducing Tasmanian genes to the Victorian population.
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Threatened species returning to Booderee National Park
Mon, 04 Sep 2017Booderee National Park will be celebrating Threatened Species Day (7 September) by welcoming the return of locally extinct mammals. Long-nosed potoroos and southern brown bandicoots have already been reintroduced to Booderee after being locally extinct for up to a century, and now preparations are underway to welcome a third threatened species, the eastern quoll, back to the park.
